Machvision Inc (牧德) yesterday said it hopes to recover business momentum this year as it posted a 34.23 percent annual decline in net income to NT$852.59 million (US$28.28 million) for last year.
Earnings per share came to NT$20.01, down from NT$30.43 in 2018.
Overall revenue fell 18.2 percent to NT$2.54 billion, the automated optical inspection specialist said.
Machvision provides services to printed circuit board (PCB) and integrated circuit manufacturers.
While the trade tensions between the US and China affected the company’s business last year, the decline was mainly due to falling orders from semiconductor companies and chip-on-film packaging specialists in the second half of last year, Machvision president Jasper Chen (陳復生) told an investors’ conference in Taipei.
“We have failed to further establish our presence in overseas markets, such as South Korea, Vietnam and the Southeast Asian region,” Chen said.
The company also suffered delays in the development of new equipment inspection technologies, Chen said.
In order to clinch orders in China amid price competition, Machvision also made sacrifices in gross margin, which contracted from 70 percent in 2018 to 64 percent last year, he said, while operating margin declined from 42 percent to 34 percent over the same period.
Machvision chairman Collin Wang (汪光夏) remained sanguine about business prospects, hoping to achieve a solid performance as it did in 2018.
“We are now readier than ever to welcome growing market demand from 5G rollouts this year,” Wang said, adding that the US-China trade conflict last year had allowed the company extra time to prepare.
“The 5G era is ushering in many opportunities for us,” he said, citing increases in 5G-related products such as substrate-like PCBs and flexible printed circuit board.
He also noted a shift in industry demand for wafer inspection from spot-checking to full-on inspections.
Counting on the company’s newly launched smart cameras to captivate market demand, which performs equipment positioning as well as basic assessments, Wang said he has high hopes for industrial applications in edge computing and artificial intelligence.
“Due to the enormous quantities of data that we need to process nowadays, edge computing can help filter out useless information, which would inevitably become a future trend that our cameras can embody,” he said.
The demise of the coal industry left the US’ Appalachian region in tatters, with lost jobs, spoiled water and countless kilometers of abandoned underground mines. Now entrepreneurs are eyeing the rural region with ambitious visions to rebuild its economy by converting old mines into solar power systems and data centers that could help fuel the increasing power demands of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. One such project is underway by a non-profit team calling itself Energy DELTA (Discovery, Education, Learning and Technology Accelerator) Lab, which is looking to develop energy sources on about 26,305 hectares of old coal land in
Taiwan’s exports soared 56 percent year-on-year to an all-time high of US$64.05 billion last month, propelled by surging global demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing and cloud service infrastructure, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Department of Statistics Director-General Beatrice Tsai (蔡美娜) called the figure an unexpected upside surprise, citing a wave of technology orders from overseas customers alongside the usual year-end shopping season for technology products. Growth is likely to remain strong this month, she said, projecting a 40 percent to 45 percent expansion on an annual basis. The outperformance could prompt the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and
Netflix on Friday faced fierce criticism over its blockbuster deal to acquire Warner Bros Discovery. The streaming giant is already viewed as a pariah in some Hollywood circles, largely due to its reluctance to release content in theaters and its disruption of traditional industry practices. As Netflix emerged as the likely winning bidder for Warner Bros — the studio behind Casablanca, the Harry Potter movies and Friends — Hollywood’s elite launched an aggressive campaign against the acquisition. Titanic director James Cameron called the buyout a “disaster,” while a group of prominent producers are lobbying US Congress to oppose the deal,
Two Chinese chipmakers are attracting strong retail investor demand, buoyed by industry peer Moore Threads Technology Co’s (摩爾線程) stellar debut. The retail portion of MetaX Integrated Circuits (Shanghai) Co’s (上海沐曦) upcoming initial public offering (IPO) was 2,986 times oversubscribed on Friday, according to a filing. Meanwhile, Beijing Onmicro Electronics Co (北京昂瑞微), which makes radio frequency chips, was 2,899 times oversubscribed on Friday, its filing showed. The bids coincided with Moore Threads’ trading debut, which surged 425 percent on Friday after raising 8 billion yuan (US$1.13 billion) on bets that the company could emerge as a viable local competitor to Nvidia
RSS